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Friday, July 25, 2025

Social distancing, an opportunity for reflection and change

by

1894 days ago
20200519

Like the Span­ish Flu a hun­dred years ago, se­vere acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or as it’s more wide­ly known as the nov­el coro­n­avirus or COVID-19, re­mind­ed mankind of its in­signif­i­cance in the uni­ver­sal or­der of things. In the health pol­i­cy world, we of­ten use the phrase “dis­eases know no bor­ders” and COVID-19 can at­test to this.

The virus spread, through the in­evitable con­se­quences of glob­al­iza­tion, from Asia to Eu­rope and be­yond at a rapid pace and with­in three months the world neared one mil­lion cas­es as health­care sys­tems strug­gled to car­ry the sud­den bur­den. In­deed, the Swine Flu and Ebo­la, re­mind­ed us of this pos­si­bil­i­ty, but Covid-19 came with a vengeance and brought us to our knees.

Hu­mans were forced to move back decades re­gard­ing their ad­vance­ment to pre­vent the spread of this virus. So in­flu­en­tial was this pan­dem­ic that, even prob­lems like cli­mate change and pol­lu­tion cre­at­ed by man’s ad­vance­ment, seem to grad­u­al­ly re­cede dur­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing and lock­down. Now that so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures are grad­u­al­ly be­ing lift­ed, are we go­ing back to nor­mal, or are we will­ing to ac­cept cul­ture change in­to a “new nor­mal” where the ideals of pop­u­la­tion health can be seen to be not such a dif­fi­cult task.

How of­ten do we wash our hands reg­u­lar­ly, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter we cough or sneeze? How of­ten do we clean and dis­in­fect fre­quent­ly touched ar­eas? How of­ten do we prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing in places where crowds are like­ly, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing flu sea­son? For those of us who think these non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of in­fec­tious res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease may be new, IT’S NOT.

Dur­ing flu sea­son these are some of the mea­sures to be em­ployed to pre­vent the spread of In­fluen­za and oth­er coro­n­avirus­es that may cause the com­mon cold or flu. We must al­so re­mem­ber that, the mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty rate of the com­mon flu al­so taps in­to our health­care ca­pac­i­ty re­serves an­nu­al­ly. If the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic now cre­ates a “new nor­mal” where our hy­giene is con­cerned, maybe we could see less in­ci­dence of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease dur­ing flu sea­son that can trans­late in­to less ex­pen­di­ture for health­care in the long-term.

Dur­ing the on­go­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, we saw the clo­sure of many fast-food restau­rants. Some found dif­fi­cul­ty adapt­ing, as T&T has evolved from a “cook at home” cul­ture to one where we ac­cess the con­ve­nience of a fast-food meal in the fast-paced world of work. They say “ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion”, and we all know food is a ne­ces­si­ty. The avalanche of so­cial me­dia posts where many demon­strat­ed their culi­nary abil­i­ty in prepar­ing a healthy meal, bears tes­ti­mo­ny to how this pan­dem­ic re­versed our un­healthy fast food norm.

In ad­di­tion, many of the lo­cal framers saw an in­crease in turnover and op­por­tu­ni­ty for sales as the race to sur­vival in this pan­dem­ic re­quired the sourc­ing of fresh pro­duce to pre­pare meals. The pan­dem­ic has on­ly af­fect­ed the nor­mal west­ern un­healthy fast-food di­et for sev­er­al months. This is not suf­fi­cient time to al­low for ad­e­quate da­ta to make an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween pop­u­la­tion health and such a change in eat­ing habits.

But the ev­i­dence is clear that a fast-food di­et is linked to chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases like di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and high cho­les­terol. Would the “new nor­mal” of ac­cess­ing lo­cal pro­duce and healthy home-cooked meals en­dure now that fast food restau­rants are cur­rent­ly re­opened for lim­it­ed hours? Will the pop­u­la­tion re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the health ben­e­fits if they forego the ease and con­ve­nience of a fast-food meal and take the time and ef­fort to pre­pare healthy home-cooked meals for their fam­i­ly? Was the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic suf­fi­cient to in­flu­ence pol­i­cy change re­gard­ing healthy di­ets, food safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty? On­ly time will tell.

Not, on­ly in T&T, but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, rivers be­came clear­er and air qual­i­ty was im­proved dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Be­cause of the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures, wildlife got a chance to breathe, not on­ly fresh air but through the ab­sence of hu­mans, in ar­eas, they once roamed. Pol­lu­tion and glob­al warm­ing are two is­sues that put mankind in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion with re­spect to sur­vival in the com­ing fu­ture. All the da­ta points to the ad­vance­ment of the hu­man species, and its ac­tiv­i­ty of achiev­ing this, as the cause of pol­lu­tion and glob­al warm­ing. T&T was once placed as a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to car­bon emo­tions glob­al­ly and with the land­fills more and more vis­i­ble, our pol­lu­tion prob­lem is no se­cret.

Dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, so­cial dis­tanc­ing saw many go on­line with re­gard to work and at­tend­ing meet­ings. All work and meet­ings were done from home by ac­cess­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate on­line plat­form. The strict Stay At Home mea­sures saw a re­duc­tion of traf­fic on the roads and a re­duc­tion of fos­sil fu­el us­age. Clo­sure of non-es­sen­tial sur­vives added to this re­duce need to use ve­hi­cles as well as a re­duc­tion in the dis­pos­al of non-biodegrad­able pack­ag­ing be­cause many were forced to buy fresh pro­duce. Such changes trans­late in­to ma­jor pop­u­la­tion health ben­e­fits by the re­duc­tion of pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change. Now that so­cial dis­tanc­ing is be­ing rolled back, it is very wor­ry­ing that pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change will con­tin­ue or be made worse putting pop­u­la­tion health in grave dan­ger.

It is no doubt that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic gave us a time-out to think about the health im­pacts we have in­curred up­on our­selves due to our ad­vance­ment. Will the lessons learned to en­dure as we slow­ly ease so­cial dis­tanc­ing or will they fade over time and we would have lost this op­por­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter our­selves?

Dr Visham Bhimull

Pri­ma­ry Care Physi­cian

MBBS (UWI)

Diplo­ma in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine (UWI)


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